Today in Supreme Court History: January 23, 1915

1/23/1915: Justice Potter Stewart born.

Justice Potter Stewart

 

Comments

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You don't need to name him, you just have to show his photo, because, etc.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Unfortunately that’s how posterity increasingly views him. As people fade into history they tend to become known for only one thing. Our brains can only hold so much, I suppose.

I remember Hunter S. Thompson describing him as a “sort of libertarian conservative”.

He got tired of Court service but waited until a Republican President got in to nominate his successor (this turned out to be Sandra Day O’Connnor). That was in 1981. This was the main reason Jimmy Carter, who was unlucky in a lot of ways, became the only President to serve a full term and not get a chance to nominate anyone.

My (first) girlfriend in law school was a Moot Court rock star, specializing in civil rights law. I mentioned Potter Stewart in a conversation and she surprised me by not knowing who he was. This was 1989. It’s like someone today not knowing who John Paul Stevens was. I was a 1L and it was an early sign to me that success as a lawyer does not necessarily require depth of legal knowledge.

[Commenter_XY]

...it was an early sign to me that success as a lawyer does not necessarily require depth of legal knowledge

So IOW captcrisis, you knew success when you saw it? 🙂

[Dan Schiavetta]

Law school was such a weird experience for me, in a different part of the country, surrounded for the only time in my life by smart, ambitious people, in and out of bed. Utterly unlike anything I'd known before. I think a lot of law students feel that way, but especially people like me in their 30s who had been working in the "real world" in an unrelated field. People acting weirdly, thinking weirdly, some of them amazingly shallow, and being weirdly impressed by unimpressive things. To me it was an alien sensibility.

[John F. Carr]

There was a comment here a few months back about law school students who planned on becoming highly paid litigators and didn't care about knowing anything off topic.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I suspected that the highest grades in my class were to 23 year olds who didn’t even read the casebooks, just the commercial outlines, and didn’t even go to class if they could avoid it. That’s the kind of twentysomething test taking machines the big firms look for.

[Dan Schiavetta]

United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (decided January 23, 2012): attaching a GPS device to suspected drug dealer's vehicle (actually his wife's) is a "search" of "effects" and therefore warrant needed

Ryburn v. Huff, 565 U.S. 469 (decided January 23, 2012): police entitled to qualified immunity for warrantless search when they went to house of student who had threatened to "shoot up" the school and when mother answered door and was asked if they had any guns she ran back inside

National Meat Ass'n v. Harris, 565 U.S. 452 (decided January 23, 2012): Federal Meat Inspection Act preempted California Penal Code as to slaughter and sale of "nonambulatory" animals (federal regulations allow sale of suitable parts after post-mortem inspection) (I am the son of a butcher and this nauseated even me)

Reynolds v. United States, 565 U.S. 432 (decided January 23, 2012): requirements of Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act do not apply to those convicted before the Act became law (July 27, 2006) unless (under the terms of the Act) the Attorney General so specifies (which he did on February 28, 2007); A.G. had been given discretion because of the plethora of pre-Act sex offenders to whom 50 different state registration laws applied

Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394 (decided January 23, 2006): Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 50 ties not just the trial court's hands but also the appellate court's: if, after motion for directed verdict (50(a)) no motion is made postverdict for judgment NOV and new trial (50(b)), then appellate court can't enter judgment NOV nor order a new trial (issue at trial was allegedly fraudulently obtained patent, and the Tenth Circuit, whose procedural law applied, had previously ruled that a 50(b) motion did not have to be made)

[John F. Carr]

In Commonwealth v. Brennan, 481 Mass. 146 (2018) the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that GPS tracking was so evil that even a single tracker counted as all three predicate events required to charge a criminal pattern of harassment. Private investigators had filed an amicus brief hoping to be exempt from the rule. The court didn't say they were exempt and didn't say they weren't exempt. Most of our prosecutors are law and order types and would not charge a police officer over illegal tracking. The progressive prosecutor from Boston got promoted to US Attorney.

The other icky Supreme Court meat-related decision upheld a rule saying it was illegal to test for mad cow disease.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Didn’t allow testing for mad cow disease?? Please give me the cite.

[John F. Carr]

After a web search just now, I may have mistaken a denial of certiorari for a decision on the merits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creekstone_Farms_Premium_Beef

[Dan Schiavetta]

I see suit was brought by the Bush Administration, which of course was in the pocket of "Big Beef".

They also refused to allow California to require stricter air emission standards in cars. They were in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

And of course they defrauded the country into going to the Iraq War, out of which their friends at Halliburton made a hefty profit via a no-bid contract.

Republican Party: pro-mad cow disease, pro-global warming, pro-war profiteering.

Some of you might remember this show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkjDz9uQ8w
go to 14:20

[defaultdotxbe]

Busy day in 2012

[Dan Schiavetta]

thanks for reading!

[Frank Drackman]

and it went down hill from there.